Notice the word “wolf bat”.
There is total justification for American researchers co operating with Chinese bat researchers. America has been suffering from bat caused disease for 75 years or so. Such cooperation is not only not a crime, it is required to learn about bats as a disease vector
Although this article describes the bat/rabies problem in New York, it is prevalent in many other states. The truth is, the Americans with bat disease expertise had a duty to collaborate with others studying bats as a disease vector, especially those with large diseased bat populations.
Below are excerpts from one article. There are many other such articles.
Bat Rabies
“Rabies virus infection in bats was first recognized in the US in 1953, and the first rabid bat was identified in New York State in 1956. Since then, the disease has been identified in each of New York’s nine species of insectivorous bats and is widely distributed geographically within the state. Bats and rabid bats can be found in every corner of New York State, from Manhattan to the most remote area of the Adirondacks.
Among bats encountered by people and pets that are submitted to the rabies laboratory for testing, about 3% are found to be rabid. Among normally behaving bats collected in their natural habitats, a fraction of 1% are rabid. Outbreaks of rabies in bat populations have not been observed, and finding one rabid bat in a colony of bats is not evidence of greater prevalence of rabies in that population.
Rabies infection in bats is similar to the disease in other mammals. It is characterized by a variable incubation period that can be months long, a clinical period of about a week with behavioral changes and progressive paralysis leading to death, and the capacity to transmit the virus by bites inflicted during the clinical period.”
https://www.wadsworth.org/programs/id/rabies/history
As a cave explorer, we were warned to avoid direct contact to bats that are found in almost all local caves we frequented. Bats also live in people’s attics. Recall the phrase “bats in hs belfry”.
Bat disease study is a legitimate function of the CDC
I quit caving altogether when a caver caught inhaled rabies in a cave. Just about every cave we explored had quite a few Mexican Freetails. They all were in the “twilight” region so once you got deeper in the cave the risk went down but there’s no way to get in without going through regions that can be heavily covered in bat guano and dead bats.